Seattle’s Lake Washington School District (LWSD) serves 24,000 students in 48 schools. The LWSD Web site is an essential information source for everything from student grades to school lunch menu postings.

Unfortunately, the site had become a constant source of complaints. It was seven years out of date, visually unappealing, impossible to update, and plagued by a near-worthless search engine. In short, the site was seriously user unfriendly and in need of an extreme makeover.

LWSD turned to Ascentium for help. Working closely with LWSD staff to pinpoint their needs and goals, Ascentium’s expert team overhauled the site’s branding and design, restructured its information architecture, and optimized the user experience at every click.

To make it easy for LWSD staff to update the site, Ascentium deployed Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007, which provides the foundation for building Web-based applications using versatile Windows Server technology.

Launched in September 2007, the new lwsd.org features a user-friendly interface and a dynamic design that reflects LWSD’s educational values and priorities. LWSD Web Administrator Linda Robertson reports that site visits are up 200% and user feedback has been more than 99% positive. “We couldn’t be happier with our decision to partner with Ascentium,” says Robertson. “They did a fabulous job with our design and information architecture.”

And the icing . . . the work done for LWSD won a Communicator Award for outstanding Web design.

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